Tennis, Spiders and Terror

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes 4 seconds

Passing a tennis court as you walk back from the pharmacy you notice a man laying on his side just inside the baseline on the far end of the court.

Dozens of balls line the fence and sit at the foot of the net. A large empty practice basket straddles the service line.

You try to talk yourself out of investigating, offering the idea that the man had halted his practice to grab some quick shuteye on the court’s 112-degree surface. The blood spattered on the front of his white T-shirt jolts you from your comfort.

Walking briskly across the court, you approach the man, who is apparently breathing but unconscious. You inspect closer the small orange and red splatters on his shirt, noting in your head that it looks like he had been squirted by a spray bottle full of blood.

Looking for the source of the blood you go to lift his shirt. As you reach toward him, what you see sends a shock up your spinal column as you jump away in primitive flight.

Crawling all over the man’s shirt are thousands of tiny red baby spiders, some of which had been smashed to create the illusion of blood.

After a few moments, you deduce the man had been hit by some sort of bomb of spiders, the red being the spiders that splattered on impact. What had rendered him unconscious was beyond your comprehension, a potential truth so horrendous and terrifying you try to suppress it but fail.

Ten years earlier you would have called 911. But not now. Not with a man who had been hit by a bullet full of baby spiders which may or may not have stripped him of consciousness. If you see something, say something, you recall hearing.

You dial the Department of Homeland Security. Awaiting instruction, you back slowly off the court, returning reluctantly to a changed world.